Summer in Berlin, it's alright PART V

♫ Freedom Call – We Are One

I think this may be the final Berlin post – well, unless my babbling becomes so uncontrollable that I had better make another post for it. So be prepared to read something inconsistent, I suppose the only properly introduced tourist tip will be...

East Side Gallery
There is not much left of the Berlin Wall, but East Side Gallery is a spot with 1.3 kilometers of the original wall. The eastern side of the wall was decorated by artists from all over the world in 1990, and it is sort of a memorial for freedom. Most of the paintings are more or less political, many of them referring to the wall itself. And the other side of the wall, basically the no-man's-land part, is full of traditional graffiti. :>

The gallery is located near the River Spree, on Mühlenstraße, near Ostbahnhof train station. Besides the art and the original wall, there's not much else to see on the spot. However, the mere wall would have been enough for me, I'm somehow so fascinated by it.

The graffiti side of the wall, as well as the first photo.

A cute graffiti.

Graffiti side, but damn – if this was authentic, it would be very impressive.

The gallery side

Okay, that was it for the East Side Gallery. I shall... talk about how I liked Berlin. Hopefully I can keep it short. In brief: I really fell in love with Berlin. Many big cities may fascinate me, but Berlin was just as awesome as I had expected it to be. And well, I don't like just any big city. I don't like Helsinki at all, although it is the biggest city in Finland (apologies to you who live there; I cannot quite explain why I don't like it).

A piece of wall near Potsdamer Platz

Berlin felt like home instantly. It was so strange, but not alienating at all. It was so easy to move there, so easy to find whatever you were looking for (except for good and cheap record stores, oh well). While some people say Berlin isn't beautiful, I would say it's interesting. There are beautiful buildings and ugly buildings, but it's much more interesting than a city with merely neutral architecture.

At Tiergarten train station

And I don't really speak German, I've forgotten everything I studied in two years in elementary school. :( I wish I hadn't though, I have learnt to like the language later on. But you can manage with English. And I felt very secure in Berlin. Seriously, I would dare to go there all alone and move about and trust that nothing too bad would happen and I wouldn't get too badly lost either.

Tiergarten

And now, in this situation, Berlin may seem more like a safe haven to me. I want to go back, I want to experience it again in a different way (probably in a more laid-back way this time; we were pretty much running from one place to another, though I liked it too, but didn't have much time to sit still and wonder, enjoy and feel...). I want to return to those moments when I felt that my dream had come true. Those moments when I felt so very happy. And then, like I already told you, on the day of my return I got to hear I would be temporarily laid off of work. And here I am still, looking for work, getting depressed without a single invitation to a job interview, feeling anything but confident about myself, feeling frustrated when days go by and I don't feel that I've accomplished anything. Then I just dream of Berlin, dream of the vacation I had, and occasionally even think of moving there – why, I don't know. I still don't speak German and I don't know what I could do in Berlin or how I could make a living over there when it doesn't seem to succeed in Finland either. It just gives me a feeling of so much better a place than, well, this.

Potsdamer Platz

However, at the end of the vacation I was happy to go home. My feet were so extremely sore that I couldn't have survived another day exploring the city, no matter how much I would have wanted. Each step hurt, but what was even worse was standing still. I had had two pairs of flats which I mostly wore there. While one pair was so soft that they couldn't possibly rub the feet uncomfortably, the other pair wasn't so nice on feet to begin with. The worst thing though was having such thin shoe soles. The shoes provided my feet with about just as much protection as walking the streets of Berlin barefoot would have. That left my foot bones sore after each long day spent mostly on our feet, and a short night spent resting didn't let them recover. Eventually I woke up to each morning with aching feet, and it took me several days to recover afterwards. Lesson learnt: good shoes do have thick soles for a reason.

A bridge across Spree near Schloss Bellevue

A detail in a work of art near Europa Center

I have yet to show what I actually purchased in Berlin, although I already showed a photo of the stuff I bought at Brandenburger Tor. Very well – we didn't really have much time to go shopping, but it's alright. I might have wanted to find some clothes or shoes, but maybe next time. I did end up trying some in one clothes store, being so much in awe by the fact they had size 32. In the end none of the fitting clothes pleased my eyes, and the only ones that did were a pair of, should I say, denim hotpants, which were just a bit too tight. Sucks.

I got a German flag, because I kinda like to own such to remind me of where I've been (not that I'd ever buy another one if I visited Germany again). Funnily enough, I don't own the flags of most countries I've visited... I wanted to buy two postcards with DDR related messages. At the TV tower I bought a tote bag which is quite a perfect carrier for my training gear. Yellow was quite an exceptional color choice for me, but the other option was green. I would have bought a T-shirt with that print if they had had my size! Then I got a small Hard Rock Cafe Berlin goblet, to remind me I've visited that place too, hahah. I had wished I could find a record store selling good and cheap German metal records, but that was too much to ask. I'd thought they'd have a lot of discounts for (a few years) old domestic CDs, but nah. :/ The only CD I bought was Powerwolf's Lupus Dei, not a bad find though. Finally, I found a pair of fancy fishnet tights for 4.99€ (and as a Finn I got dumbfounded when the clerk gave me one cent in exchange for my five euro bill).

Oh but I'm a Finn and I visited Germany? Must bring home some booze... This may make me seem like an alcoholic or something, which I certainly am not, but oh... Captain Morgan. I just had to get bottles which aren't available in Finland! The most important thing for me to find was a bottle of Captain Morgan Original Spiced Gold, which wasn't available in Finland until... I don't know? During the trip I still thought there was none available here, but a few days ago I found out 0.5 liter bottles are sold here as well – but as far as I know, they haven't been available for long. I'm not sure if it is good or bad news for me – I happened to fell in love with Original Spiced Gold and if it's too easy for me to get my hands on it, then... Seriously! It smells like candy and tastes like candy! And yes, on its own. The Black Label bottle was my tax free purchase, probably for the sake of getting a one-liter bottle to my piratey collection of, err, Captain Morgan containers. And the can with a mix of Captain&Cola was an awesome find – why don't they have such mixes in cans in Finland, especially not in grocery stores? Oh yeah, our alcohol policies are so strict. :( When some people cannot use it in a wise way, those who do (like me, believe it or not, see what I said here) get to suffer as well.

Okay, the end of my Berlin series is drawing near. I hope you enjoyed reading the stories – and thank you all who did! If you want to ask something about the city, I'd happily try to answer. So long!

Summer in Berlin, it's alright PART IV

♫ Silentrain – Until You Break

Back to Berlin, my dear readers! This post will be dedicated to, hmm, Berlin heights, at least to those spots that we visited. Let's start with the very famous and important landmark...

Berliner Fernsehturm
The TV tower! It's the tallest building in Germany and sort of a symbol for Berlin, and you can really see it from so many locations in the city. The antenna reaches the height of 368.03 m (1,207.45 ft) while the visitor platform is just a bit over 200 meters. Hmm, there are at least two visitor floors though, because there is a revolving restaurant up the stairs from the floor where the elevators stop. (I'm not sure if the restaurant tables have to be reserved beforehand, we only visited the bar on the "elevator" floor.)

Getting to the tower is not simple and fast, though. Depending on the time of the day, the queues to the elevators may be very long! When you go buy a ticket, you will get a number, and then there are screens which tell when certain numbers may head for the security check and elevators. Basically, you can leave the tower and come back when your turn is closer – however, when your time really comes, you'll have to get yourself to the entrance in ten minutes or otherwise you've just lost your turn. But yeah, it can take long – I think we waited for over an hour. And as I said, there's a security check. All kind of bottles are among the forbidden items, so you might want to remember that if you're carrying a water bottle or something.

There was a funny elevator boy operating the machine, and on our way up, he quickly summarized the most important facts about the tower and the lift (such as the speed, shamefully, I cannot remember it) first in German and then in English. He ended the English explanation (which he had probably had to repeat more than once or twice while working there!) by adding in a smooth flow "...and nobody's listening", which greatly amused us, and we got to point out that we did. Not sure if he really had expected no one to be listening and thus paying attention to his remark.

And now, some scenes from up there:

In the top right corner you can see Brandenburger Tor. The "forest" is Tiergarten.

That's just so... eastern.

The tower entrance fee is 11.50€ (and –25% with Berlin Welcome Card!) and it's worth it – the views are simply awesome! You can see pretty much "everything", and there are photos and texts of the most important places which you can see in a certain direction and such. And are you afraid of heights? Don't worry, despite the remarkable height the TV tower isn't a frightening place! When you are up there, it really doesn't feel like you were as high as you are. Besides, you cannot look so directly down from there that you'd get very dizzy. So if you only have a mild fear of heights, do not skip a visit to the TV tower.

Having some beer up there was necessary as well. :D Finns like us can say that the top bar wasn't as expensive as you could expect it to be. It was more pricey than the bars on the ground level of Berlin, but still reasonable for sure. Cheap from a Finn's point of view.

Siegessäule
The next height spot is the Victory Column. It's roughly at the half way of Straße des 17. Juni, at Großer Stern, a big junction of several (big) streets. Since it is in the middle of the intersection, you don't cross the streets in order to get there but use a tunnel under the streets instead.

The entrance fee was small, a few euros or something. There's a small museum on the bottom level presenting different signs of victory from all over the world. And then, the stairs up to the tower...

From the mouth of the tunnel

Up on the panorama platform – see the TV tower roughly in the middle of the photo.

So, yeah... I mentioned stairs. No elevator. I'm not saying the climb was physically too challenging – the whole tower is only 66.89 meters tall. However, the spiral staircase was very narrow – passing those who were going in the different direction was a bit of a challenge. Besides, I was wearing high heels – wouldn't have if I had known we were going there, but it was our spontaneous idea on the day of departure, and since I was about to travel in the heaviest shoes I had with me, well... Now I can tell you: don't climb up there in high heels. Just a friendly suggestion.

And the platform up there? It was just as cramped as the staircase. And as you can see, an open-air platform, so you could feel the wind up there and... See much more directly down from where you were standing than in the TV tower. I'm not the type to panic easily, and well, I didn't, but I did feel quite anxious. So yeah, feeling a bit rickety myself, and realizing that no wait, there's absolutely no way to evacuate this tower quickly if necessary... Not a comfortable feeling. To me it also felt like the platform had been slanting. Sure, we were in a cage, but still. I tried to take photos of the golden statue on the platform, but I just couldn't stand there like that, looking up and holding the camera high too, with the rail behind my back.

The conclusion: if you are afraid of heights or cramped places, you are likely to feel very uncomfortable up in Siegessäule! Seriously, I don't even recommend it to anyone who think they might feel anxious up there. I'm happy that I went there once – I am adventurous like that and want to experience such things, but I might not want to go again. Even though the height of Siegessäule is just a fraction of that of Fernsehturm's, it feels much, much worse. You'll certainly feel more secure in 200 metres.

Siegessäule photographed from the back side of Brandenburger Tor.

Until next time, so long!

Summer in Berlin, no, it's Potsdam PART III

♫ Orden Ogan – And if you do right

Okay, now I'm back to posting about my trip, yet this post will be entirely about Potsdam, not Berlin. It's a neighboring city to Berlin though, the capital of the federal state of Brandenburg. It's very easy to get there from Berlin – at least one of the S Bahn lines which go through the city in east-west direction goes straight to Potsdam too, but you need a ticket to the C fare zone in order to get as far as to Potsdam. This city is located (south)west of Berlin and the train ride is probably half an hour long, depending on where you hop in! As we were staying in West Berlin, it was probably twenty minutes from the nearest train station.

I could say that we "only" visited Park Sanssouci, though... Since the park is quite big, it did take us half a day. (In the afternoon we returned to Berlin and went on to other tourist attractions like madmen, almost until midnight. Had a long day. My feet were begging for mercy.) We were merely strolling around in the park, photographing the area and its fine buildings, but we didn't visit any. If you are into history, you might want to see some of the palaces from the inside as well, at least most of them were museums of some kind. We thought we wanted to save our precious time for other things, so we skipped those tours.

This yellow building is Sanssouci Palace, a summer palace of Frederick the Great. The fountain photo was taken from the direction of the palace. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful park, yet the weather was not the best for photographing! And I got to taste the cruelty of the sun as I burnt my shoulders and thus, got tan lines. DX Eventually it got cloudy and began to rain too.

Some details near the palace: some flowers (which I can barely recognize) and The Grey Heron. I love to take photos of birds!

The Chinese House

The New Palace

Orangerieschloss

Park Sanssouci is not the only place to visit in Potsdam, but we skipped the others nevertheless. Potsdam also has a Brandenburger Gate of its own, and there are also other parks and palaces. It's a very beautiful city! I've often read how Berlin is quite ugly in a way (I disagree though) but Potsdam is at least more consistent. There is also a film museum in the city, and it's located quite near the railway station (unlike Park Sanssouci). Supposedly, shopping opportunities in the city are nice as well, but we were there on Sunday, when most stores are closed.

Here we had Potsdam in brief, in the next travel post we'll get back to Berlin again! So long!

Summer in Berlin, it's alright PART II

♫ Alphaville – Forever Young

I'll start this part by mentioning three "must see" attractions which are located quite close to each other. Okay well, only one of them is a must-must-see, others very intriguing though.

On our first whole day we took an S-Bahn to Hauptbahnhof, the main railway station, and headed south, across The Spree river.

Moby Dick!

Reichstag
This is the house of parliament, the Bundestag. It's almost "right across the Spree from Hauptbahnhof" and worth seeing since the building is beautiful, though we only settled for viewing it from the outside. We saw groups of people going in and coming out, so I can probably say it's possible to get there – however, the security measures seemed to be strict, maybe for a reason.

I like these photos with my blurry face. :>

Brandenburger Tor
In my opinion, this would be the symbol of Berlin, the first of those. So it's a must see! Brandenburger Tor, being Tor, a gate, is a monument to walk through at least. However, although it's probably nothing but a gate, we managed to spend about two hours there altogether, not at one go, but still. We just took some... photos. Brandenburger by day, Brandenburger by dusk, Brandenburger by night...

Besides the historical gate and its architectural beauty, there may be other interesting things to see at the spot. Maybe something on the back side, towards Straße des 17. Juni (yes, that's a street), but more on the front side, where the quadriga is facing, where the is a square called Pariser Platz. So keep your eyes open! You are probably likely to see a whole bunch of tourists (and if you're strolling "alone" and with a big camera hanging around your neck like me, you might be asked to take a lot of photos for others), but there were many groups offering "attractions" to tourists. Many people dressed up so that you could have your photo taken with them for a few euros (old soldier uniforms with historical flags and such, but also Star Wars characters), a guy making huge soap bubbles, musicians, dance and acrobatics...

Brandenburger Tor, so beautiful that it attracts visitors from other galaxies!

The quadriga

And what I spent money on: a guy who had the uniform of a border guard and who was offering curiosity scraps of paper. For two euros I got a Brandenburger tor postcard with several interesting stamps (which he stamped right there in front of my eyes) such as a DDR VISUM Brandenburger Tor one and a Soviet Berlin related one, a print of 100 DM, a Brandenburger Tor bookmark and a hand-numbered one-day visa to cross the old border (with a DDR stamp too!). Of course they're just pieces of paper, but interesting enough, and I love the stamps! (And as a graphic designer I'm interested in many types of... prints.) And the price was not bad for a tourist who's interested in the history of the city. The dividing of Berlin is one of the most interesting things in recent history since even I have existed while the city was still divided (though I gotta say, back then I didn't care much).

Holocaust Mahnmal
The memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe is just south of Brandenburger Tor, very close to it anyway. Although it's a monument for a remarkable historical event, the site itself is not old: the monument was opened in 2005. It is "only" a huge bunch of concrete slabs put up in a grid pattern on a sloping field, but I found it very, very impressive. Some people call it a labyrinth, but no, it's a simple grid pattern. Just go deep in the middle of the area and you'll see how impressive it is! However, don't try to climb onto the slabs – it's neither very polite since it is a monument for murdered people nor very wise since the security will call you down at once. It's not very safe either. And no, I didn't try, but saw many people doing it.

Both big roads from Brandenburger Tor, the aforementioned Straße des 17. Juni (west of it) and Unter den Linden (east of it) are interesting and beautiful in their own right too, but more will come later. Unter den Linden also crosses Friedrichstraße (mentioned in my previous post) not far from Brandenburger. Until the next time – so long!

Summer in Berlin, it's alright PART I

♫ Iron Maiden – The Talisman

The first part of my Berlin trip journal! I'm not going to write day-by-day or anything, especially since many of those were extreme performances anyway; running from one place to another with a camera hanging around my neck all the time. Instead, I'm going to write travelling tips, hopefully someone will find them useful!

Public transport
When I first laid my eyes on the S and U Bahn route map, I just thought "bloody hell" and wished I wouldn't have to do it ever again. However, I was trying to find a way from the airport Tegel to our hotel. Well, I later found an updated version of the map which was only slightly different, but enough to make it simpler. As a graphic designer who made her thesis on using colors to convey information, I could still complain to the designer of the map, but well... :> Things get much easier when you try it in practice once or twice!

Seriously: using public transport in Berlin is ridiculously easy. We used the S (local train) and U Bahn (underground) daily, and relied mostly on those. We only used buses on our way from the airport to the city center and back (and in Potsdam). Same tickets are valid in all those forms of transport (and in trams, which we didn't use). It's also quite easy to get off at the right stop since the following stops or stations were displayed somewhere in those vehicles. Some U-Bahn carriages were an exception though, but it was usually easy enough to see the name of the station when the train was only slowing down. The trickiest part was finding your way out of the biggest stations! :> And if you were changing from S to U or vice versa, it was potentially difficult to find the right track – however, usually there were not too many different tracks for public transport, and by following the U and S letters in signs it was easy enough to find your way to the right place. That was particularly useful at bigger stations with long-distance traffic trains.

Besides, the trains were usually on time, and even if they were not, you never had to wait for long. I cannot remember what our longest wait really was, but waiting for the bus to the airport for seven minutes felt long after the local trains.

At the main railway station

The Warschauer Straße station, in the east (surprise)

Berlin Welcome Card
This is a good option for tourists to consider! Public transport tickets for a few days (a few different options, we took the five-day one since that's how long we were there), with the fare zones AB or ABC. The AB zone is probably enough for those who only stay in Berlin, and Tegel airport is inside that area as well. But since we wanted to visit the neighbouring city Potsdam, we took the ABC zone cards. 35,90€, and besides the unlimited use of public transport, you can also get a lot of discounts with the card. For example: We got 25% off the entrance fees to the TV tower and the zoo. And at least we never had to wonder how to use the ticket vending machines. Ah, extra saved brain cells.

Kurfürstendamm
This is a remarkable, big street in Berlin (on the western side). I'm mentioning it so soon since it was so close to our hotel. It is considered the most important shopping street too, though it depends on what you want to shop. :> If you're looking for high quality brands, then sure yeah, they all have stores there. Louis Vuitton, Prada, Rolex, Gucci... Not my cup of tea. Some H&M stores as well, but I wouldn't visit them in Germany. And on the other hand I didn't go there for shopping to begin with. A big and posh department store called KaDeWe is very close too, not in Kurfürstendamm though, but if you continue east from where Ku'damm ends and another street begins, you'll soon be there. Europa Center, another shopping center, is very close too, west of KaDeWe towards Ku'damm. There is quite an awesome cafe and restaurant on the top floor of KaDeWe! We only tried the cafe though. If you're into pastries and such, go try. Although the department store itself is expensive, I thought the cafe prices were reasonable. My piece of apple cake was less than four euros, but oh damn – it was HUGE. And seriously: there's a lot to choose from.

KaDeWe, only near Ku'damm

However, I thought the best thing in Ku'damm was Hard Rock Cafe! So yeah, if you're hunting for those experiences, it's on the southern side of the street.

Friedrichstraße
Another big street with shopping possibilities and some culture. The S Bahn station with the same name is located closer to the northern end of the street, between Hauptbahnhof (the main railway station west from it) and Alexanderplatz (the former eastern center) (with some S-Bahn stops in between). A good plan might be to go to the Friedrichstrße station and head south; you will find shops to visit, and you're heading for Checkpoint Charlie. However, if you choose to walk from the station to the checkpoint, don't do it just because "it's just a few U-Bahn stops away anyway" – it's much longer than it would seem. That's what we thought, and we were doing just that late on Sunday evening – couldn't pop to the stores. Checkpoint Charlie is the most famous East-West Berlin crossing point with those "YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR" signs. American sector huh, pun intended with that McDonald's restaurant right at the border these days?

Yours truly looks a bit exhausted, but we had only been walking for ten hours at that point...

The next part will follow as soon as I find the time to write it! I've been trying to update my portfolio as well, it's such a dull chore. Auf wiedersehen!